


death doesn't discriminate (between the sinners and the saints)

by fortunatedaughter



Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: AU, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 13:07:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8250182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortunatedaughter/pseuds/fortunatedaughter
Summary: The thing is, she didn’t even believe at first. She couldn’t believe it. Her Dad didn’t die. Bill Baker didn’t die. Bill Baker was a piece of work all on his own, larger than life and bigger and badder than something as silly as death. (Later on, she learns from Mike that when she heard the news, she went catatonic for an hour and scared him shitless that he was nearly ready to call 991. Which Ginny just finds odd because she doesn't even remember Mike being there when Will found her cutting class during sixth period and telling her the news.)orthe everyone is in high school together au.





	

**Author's Note:**

> and here we have the second of my summer projects! i'm still not quite sure what i've written here aside from the fact it's a small town au with a heavy focus on slow burn mike&ginny so here we go!
> 
> as always, the only thing that belongs to me here are the typos and shitty sentence structure; pitch and its characters belong to the talented team at fox. title is from 'wait for it' which is from the hamilton soundtrack (but the line in question shows up a dozen other times or so!)

The thing is, she didn’t even believe at first. She couldn’t believe it. Her Dad didn’t die. Bill Baker didn’t die. Bill Baker was a piece of work all on his own, larger than life and bigger and badder than something as silly as _death_. 

(Later on, she learns from Mike that when she heard the news, she went catatonic for an hour and scared him shitless that he was nearly ready to call 991. Which Ginny just finds odd because she doesn't even remember Mike being there when Will found her cutting class during sixth period and telling her the news.) 

Ginny Baker is 17, 18 in three months, starting senior year in 4 and her father is dead. This is who she is now.

* * *

 The morning of her first say of senior year, Ginny Baker stands in front of the mirror in her bathroom. To her left, there are a handful of make-up products, well used and well worn. To her right is a ceramic tree branch where she hangs the handful of jewelry that she owns. The morning of her first day of senior year, Ginny Baker stares at herself in mirror and feels as if she’s looking at a stranger.

She’s still the same girl, of course. The slope of her nose, the curve of her jaw, the right eyebrow that’s always cocked just a little bit higher than her left. The colour of her eyes is the same; those exact warm shades of bronze and dusky gold with hints of inky black onyx that add an air of mystery. She knows that if she smiles, those dimples will peak out and she knows that, theoretically – she’s the same person.

She just doesn’t feel like it.

With a deep inhale, Ginny forgoes the make-up and merely rubs in moisturizer and leaves the regular stud earrings in. It’s the first time where she wasn’t more slightly dressed up, wasn’t trying to put her best foot forward for the up-coming day.

(This is what grief does, she muses, walking the short way towards the school. It carves holes in your life, leaves you a shell of who you used to be. And there’s nothing you can fucking do about it.) 

* * *

 The death of Bill Baker is, despite Ginny’s hopes, news around town. 

She wishes it wasn’t. She wishes she could just go about shit as she normally would – skipping third period with Evelyn and shit-talking with Mike and getting rides home with Will despite his grumblings about his kid sister cramping his style. She just wants everything to be normal.

She doesn’t want to be the kid girl who’s Dad died before she could even start senior year. But it seems that’s what she’s now known as.

Evelyn finds her at her locker half an hour before classes start and Ginny tries to fight back the annoyance at seeing her friend. For a mere moment, Evelyn doesn’t say anything and Ginny just keeps on loading her locker with the textbooks and notepads she brought today. 

“This is awkward.” The other girl huffs out, one hip leaning against the lockers.

“Really?” Ginny snorted. “Hadn’t noticed.”

“Normally, we’re all happy and squealing about the first day of school and… I feel bad if we are like that.” Her voice dips, pain lacing what she’s saying. She forgets sometimes, that her Dad used to drive Evelyn home when her Mom forgot to pick her only daughter out,

Ginny merely hums.

Evelyn bites her bottom lip. “Blip asked me out.”

“What?" Ginny turns. "Really? Oh my God, Evelyn." 

She musters up a smile for her friend because she has to – because she wants everyone to know she’s fine, fine enough that people don’t have to worry about her, fine enough that she can hold her tears back and smile. (But not fine enough that she doesn’t feel like every single piece of her isn’t breaking at every moment.) 

“Yeah.” Not even Evelyn can fight the smile that blooms on her lips - she's been waiting for Blip to ask her out for months now so really, it's about damn time.

“Did Trevor –“

Ginny shook her head, grabbing her history book before closing her locker door. “I told you, we broke up like a month ago.” 

“You never told me why that was.” 

“Just didn’t wanna be there anymore you know? Felt like we were better as friends.” She shrugged. (‘ _Come on, Ginny, stop being so emotional! Nut up!_ ’ he had said. She remembers thinking in that moment how then, more than ever, being one of the guys really fucking sucked.) 

“Right.” Evelyn stares at her, that worrying little frown starting to bloom between her eyebrows. She opens her mouth to say something, anything but before she can, the bell rings and Ginny makes a hasty retreat (She hates how relieved she feels at escaping Evelyn and right after that she feels guilty for even running away.)

* * *

Classes pass by. Questions are asked; the semester is outlined in a painful amount of detail. Ginny looks out the window and if she squints, she can see her Dad hoping over the oval’s fence, glove and ball in hand, a younger Ginny following behind him with stars in her eyes.

Ginny turns back to the front of the class, ignores the worried glance Blip and Evelyn share, and pretends that she’s _fine_. 

The pang of grief never lessens.

* * *

“Baker!” Lawson calls out, trailing behind her. Ginny for her part closes her eyes, cursing everything and everyone known to man. Why couldn’t she have just made a hasty retreat? Lawson is quite literally one of the last people she wants to see or talk too or deal with right now, especially given the fraught state of her emotions. But if there’s one thing Ginny’s learnt the last few months, she doesn’t get what she wants. With a soft sigh, she turns towards him and nearly drops her history textbook.

The summer was _good_ to Mike Lawson. She remembers what he looked like beforehand is the thing – all skin and bones, arms and legs that seemingly had a mind of their own and didn’t always do what he wanted them too. She remembers how his hair was just this side of floppy, and remem         bers how she used to tease the fuck out of him for the whole thing. Remembers how his eyes were always just a little bit dopy and adorable, like a goddamn puppy personified.

Now? 

All that skin and bones is replaced by muscle and sinew and shoulder blades. His previously floppy, slightly too long hair is replaced by hair cropped close to his skull, neatly trimmed and maintained. He seems in control of every movement he’s ever made and his eyes. God, his eyes – they’re dark and probing now, all knowing and all seeing. The shift from gangly and young and awkward to filled out and mature and graceful.

(Looking at him now Ginny feels the stirrings of attraction unlike she’s felt before – not even with Trevor – but it’s nothing compared to that at crush she had on him when she was 6 years old; feeling that come back in full force nearly _staggers_ her and she sort of hates herself. Just a little bit.) 

Her fingers tighten on the strap of her backpack. “Yeah?”

His hand scrubs along the back of his neck and for a moment, she gets a brief glimpse of the Mike Lawson he used to be. “I just – wanted to say – I’m sorry,”

“No, don’t okay?” Ginny rushes to cut him off. “Just. Don’t. I’ve had enough condolences to last a lifetime and if I have to hear it from you…”

 _I just might break,_ goes unsaid. She remembers last year when his own Mom died and how the two of them spent the wee hours of the morning on the roof of his house, and how the grief leaked from his own body and onto her own. 

Mike seemingly gets a look in his eyes and this – this is why she’s the only one of her friends she can say shit like that too. He gets it. “Okay.” He nods.

He’s quiet for a moment, the toe of his Nike scuffing against the concrete ground. “You okay, though?” 

Ginny laughs bitterly. “Nope.” She inhales sharply, feeling the pang of grief come back tenfold and the sting of tears prick the back of her eyes. “I don’t – Will has Mom, you know? I had… I had Dad. And I don’t know how to be me without him.”

Mike doesn’t say anything again, merely levels her with the quiet and probing look that is seemingly newly added to his personality. It makes her feel off kilter, like she doesn’t know how to be around him again.

“You gonna try out for the team this year?”

She snorted. “Like they’re gonna let me.”

“They might.” He shrugged. “You been workin’ on that screwball, right?”

“How – how do you know about that?” Ginny startled, staring at him with something akin to wonder and question.

“Worked a summer at the batting cages.” He smirked wryly. “Saw you put in a coupla hours.”

It was more than a couple of hours, in reality – she spent three whole days till 9pm working on that pitch of hers.

Her head quirks to the side. “You think I got a chance?”

Mike snorts. “Considering Tommy Miller’s weak-ass fastball, yeah, I think you got a chance."

She opens her mouth to say something, anything – words of thanks, because no else seems to believe in her the way he just demonstrated – before she hears it.

“Mike!” Rachel calls out, leaning against Mike’s truck with a pinched and annoyed expression on her face. “Come on! We gotta go!” 

Ginny pursed her lips. “Still datin’ Rachel, huh?”

Mike gives her a quizzical look. “Yeah.”

(Ginny doesn’t comment how she saw Rachel Patrick making out David Andrews three weeks ago at Trevor’s back to school party. It’s not her business, because she and Lawson aren’t friends. He’s friends with her brother, sure, Blip, yeah and she’s friends with Evelyn, but that’s basically where it ends. And that doesn’t give her the right to comment on the state of his relationship.)

She merely shakes her head and hums softly to herself. “See you around, Lawson.”

As she turns to take the back way through home, she comes past the baseball diamond, watching the pale golden sun light up the green and the reds and small holes for the basses to be screwed into because their school is cheap, even on a good day.

(And she’s reminded of that one afternoon when Will didn’t want to play baseball and she threw the ball at her Dad and how proud he was every other time he re-told that story.)

Ginny Baker is not okay.

But she’s getting there.


End file.
